We give two new quantum algorithms for solving semidefinite programs (SDPs) providing quantum speed-ups. We consider SDP instances with m constraint matrices, each of dimension n, rank r, and sparsity s. The first algorithm assumes an input model where one is given access to entries of the matrices at unit cost. We show that it has run time O~(s2(m−−√ε−10+n−−√ε−12)), where ε is the error. This gives an optimal dependence in terms of m,n and quadratic improvement over previous quantum algorithms when m≈n. The second algorithm assumes a fully quantum input model in which the matrices are given as quantum states. We show that its run time is O~(m−−√+poly(r))⋅poly(logm,logn,B,ε−1), with B an upper bound on the trace-norm of all input matrices. In particular the complexity depends only poly-logarithmically in n and polynomially in r. We apply the second SDP solver to the problem of learning a good description of a quantum state with respect to a set of measurements: Given m measurements and copies of an unknown state ρ, we show we can find in time m−−√⋅poly(logm,logn,r,ε−1) a description of the state as a quantum circuit preparing a density matrix which has the same expectation values as ρ on the m measurements, up to error ε. The density matrix obtained is an approximation to the maximum entropy state consistent with the measurement data considered in Jaynes' principle from statistical mechanics. As in previous work, we obtain our algorithm by "quantizing" classical SDP solvers based on the matrix multiplicative weight method. One of our main technical contributions is a quantum Gibbs state sampler for low-rank Hamiltonians with a poly-logarithmic dependence on its dimension, which could be of independent interest.

We give semidefinite program (SDP) quantum solvers with an exponential speed-up over classical ones. Specifically, we consider SDP instances with m constraint matrices of dimension n, each of rank at most r, and assume that the input matrices of the SDP are given as quantum states (after a suitable normalization). Then we show there is a quantum algorithm that solves the SDP feasibility problem with accuracy ǫ by using √ m log m · poly(log n,r, ǫ −1 ) quantum gates. The dependence on n provides an exponential improvement over the work of Brand ˜ao and Svore [6] and the work of van Apeldoorn et al. [23], and demonstrates an exponential quantum speed-up when m and r are small. We apply the SDP solver to the problem of learning a good description of a quantum state with respect to a set of measurements: Given m measurements and a supply of copies of an unknown state ρ, we show we can find in time √ m log m · poly(log n,r, ǫ −1 ) a description of the state as a quantum circuit preparing a density matrix which has the same expectation values as ρ on the m measurements up to error ǫ. The density matrix obtained is an approximation to the maximum entropy state consistent with the measurement data considered in Jaynes’ principle. As in previous work, we obtain our algorithm by “quantizing” classical SDP solvers based on the matrix multiplicative weight update method. One of our main technical contributions is a quantum Gibbs state sampler for low-rank Hamiltonians with a poly-logarithmic dependence on its dimension based on the techniques developed in quantum principal component analysis, which could be of independent interest. Our quantum SDP solver is different from previous ones in the following two aspects: (1) it follows from a zero-sum game approach of Hazan [11] of solving SDPs rather than the primal-dual approach by Arora and Kale [5]; and (2) it does not rely on any sparsity assumption of the input matrices.

We investigate the sample complexity of Hamiltonian simulation: how many copies of an unknown quantum state are required to simulate a Hamiltonian encoded by the density matrix of that state? We show that the procedure proposed by Lloyd, Mohseni, and Rebentrost [Nat. Phys., 10(9):631--633, 2014] is optimal for this task. We further extend their method to the case of multiple input states, showing how to simulate any Hermitian polynomial of the states provided. As applications, we derive optimal algorithms for commutator simulation and orthogonality testing, and we give a protocol for creating a coherent superposition of pure states, when given sample access to those states. We also show that this sample-based Hamiltonian simulation can be used as the basis of a universal model of quantum computation that requires only partial swap operations and simple single-qubit states.

We describe two procedures which, given access to one copy of a quantum state and a sequence of two-outcome measurements, can distinguish between the case that at least one of the measurements accepts the state with high probability, and the case that all of the measurements have low probability of acceptance. The measurements cannot simply be tried in sequence, because early measurements may disturb the state being tested. One procedure is based on a variant of Marriott-Watrous amplification. The other procedure is based on the use of a test for this disturbance, which is applied with low probability. We find a number of applications. First, quantum query complexity separations in the property testing model for testing isomorphism of functions under group actions. We give quantum algorithms for testing isomorphism, linear isomorphism and affine isomorphism of boolean functions which use exponentially fewer queries than is possible classically, and a quantum algorithm for testing graph isomorphism which uses polynomially fewer queries than the best algorithm known. Second, testing properties of quantum states and operations. We show that any finite property of quantum states can be tested using a number of copies of the state which is logarithmic in the size of the property, and give a test for genuine multipartite entanglement of states of n qubits that uses O(n) copies of the state. Third, correcting an error in a result of Aaronson on de-Merlinizing quantum protocols. This result claimed that, in any one-way quantum communication protocol where two parties are assisted by an all-powerful but untrusted third party, the third party can be removed with only a modest increase in the communication cost. We give a corrected proof of a key technical lemma required for Aaronson's result.

%B Proceedings of ​the 28th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA)
%P 1598-1611
%8 2017/01/01
%G eng
%U http://epubs.siam.org/doi/10.1137/1.9781611974782.105
%R 10.1137/1.9781611974782.105
%0 Journal Article
%D 2016
%T A Complete Characterization of Unitary Quantum Space
%A Bill Fefferman
%A Cedric Yen-Yu Lin
%X We give two complete characterizations of unitary quantum space-bounded classes. The first is based on the Matrix Inversion problem for well-conditioned matrices. We show that given the size-n efficient encoding of a 2O(k(n))×2O(k(n)) well-conditioned matrix H, approximating a particular entry of H−1 is complete for the class of problems solvable by a quantum algorithm that uses O(k(n)) space and performs all quantum measurements at the end of the computation. In particular, the problem of computing entries of H−1 for an explicit well-conditioned n×n matrix H is complete for unitary quantum logspace. We then show that the problem of approximating to high precision the least eigenvalue of a positive semidefinite matrix H, encoded as a circuit, gives a second characterization of unitary quantum space complexity. In the process we also establish an equivalence between unitary quantum space-bounded classes and certain QMA proof systems. As consequences, we establish that QMA with exponentially small completeness-soundness gap is equal to PSPACE, that determining whether a local Hamiltonian is frustration-free is PSPACE-complete, and give a provable setting in which the ability to prepare PEPS states gives less computational power than the ability to prepare the ground state of a generic local Hamiltonian.
%8 2016/04/05
%G eng
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.01384
%0 Journal Article
%D 2016
%T Performance of QAOA on Typical Instances of Constraint Satisfaction Problems with Bounded Degree
%A Cedric Yen-Yu Lin
%A Yechao Zhu
%X We consider constraint satisfaction problems of bounded degree, with a good notion of "typicality", e.g. the negation of the variables in each constraint is taken independently at random. Using the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA), we show that μ+Ω(1/D−−√) fraction of the constraints can be satisfied for typical instances, with the assignment efficiently produced by QAOA. We do so by showing that the averaged fraction of constraints being satisfied is μ+Ω(1/D−−√), with small variance. Here μ is the fraction that would be satisfied by a uniformly random assignment, and D is the number of constraints that each variable can appear. CSPs with typicality include Max-kXOR and Max-kSAT. We point out how it can be applied to determine the typical ground-state energy of some local Hamiltonians. We also give a similar result for instances with "no overlapping constraints", using the quantum algorithm. We sketch how the classical algorithm might achieve some partial result.
%8 2016/01/08
%G eng
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.01744
%0 Journal Article
%D 2016
%T Quantum Merlin Arthur with Exponentially Small Gap
%A Bill Fefferman
%A Cedric Yen-Yu Lin
%X We study the complexity of QMA proof systems with inverse exponentially small promise gap. We show that this class can be exactly characterized by PSPACE, the class of problems solvable with a polynomial amount of memory. As applications we show that a "precise" version of the Local Hamiltonian problem is PSPACE-complete, and give a provable setting in which the ability to prepare PEPS states is not as powerful as the ability to prepare the ground state of general Local Hamiltonians.
%8 2016/01/08
%G eng
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.01975
%0 Journal Article
%J 43rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2016)
%D 2016
%T Space-Efficient Error Reduction for Unitary Quantum Computations
%A Bill Fefferman
%A Hirotada Kobayashi
%A Cedric Yen-Yu Lin
%A Tomoyuki Morimae
%A Harumichi Nishimura
%X

This paper develops general space-efficient methods for error reduction for unitary quantum computation. Consider a polynomial-time quantum computation with completeness c and soundnesss, either with or without a witness (corresponding to QMA and BQP, respectively). To convert this computation into a new computation with error at most 2−p, the most space-efficient method known requires extra workspace of O(plog1c−s) qubits. This space requirement is too large for scenarios like logarithmic-space quantum computations. This paper presents error-reduction methods for unitary quantum computations (i.e., computations without intermediate measurements) that require extra workspace of just O(logpc−s) qubits. This in particular gives the first methods of strong amplification for logarithmic-space unitary quantum computations with two-sided bounded error. This also leads to a number of consequences in complexity theory, such as the uselessness of quantum witnesses in bounded-error logarithmic-space unitary quantum computations, the PSPACE upper bound for QMA with exponentially-small completeness-soundness gap, and strong amplification for matchgate computations.

Inspired by the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb testing problem [arXiv:hep-th/9305002], we introduce a new query complexity model, which we call bomb query complexity $B(f)$. We investigate its relationship with the usual quantum query complexity $Q(f)$, and show that $B(f)=\Theta(Q(f)^2)$. This result gives a new method to upper bound the quantum query complexity: we give a method of finding bomb query algorithms from classical algorithms, which then provide nonconstructive upper bounds on $Q(f)=\Theta(\sqrt{B(f)})$. We subsequently were able to give explicit quantum algorithms matching our upper bound method. We apply this method on the single-source shortest paths problem on unweighted graphs, obtaining an algorithm with $O(n^{1.5})$ quantum query complexity, improving the best known algorithm of $O(n^{1.5}\sqrt{\log n})$ [arXiv:quant-ph/0606127]. Applying this method to the maximum bipartite matching problem gives an $O(n^{1.75})$ algorithm, improving the best known trivial $O(n^2)$ upper bound.

%B Theory of Computing
%V 12
%P 1-35
%8 2016/11/28
%G eng
%U http://theoryofcomputing.org/articles/v012a018/
%N 18
%( Proceeding CCC '15 Proceedings of the 30th Conference on Computational Complexity, Pages 537-566
%R 10.4086/toc.2016.v012a018
%0 Journal Article
%J 10th Conference on the Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography (TQC 2015)
%D 2015
%T Oracles with Costs
%A Shelby Kimmel
%A Cedric Yen-Yu Lin
%A Han-Hsuan Lin
%X While powerful tools have been developed to analyze quantum query complexity, there are still many natural problems that do not fit neatly into the black box model of oracles. We create a new model that allows multiple oracles with differing costs. This model captures more of the difficulty of certain natural problems. We test this model on a simple problem, Search with Two Oracles, for which we create a quantum algorithm that we prove is asymptotically optimal. We further give some evidence, using a geometric picture of Grover's algorithm, that our algorithm is exactly optimal.
%B 10th Conference on the Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography (TQC 2015)
%V 44
%P 1-26
%8 2015/02/07
%@ 978-3-939897-96-5
%G eng
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.02174
%R 10.4230/LIPIcs.TQC.2015.1
%0 Journal Article
%D 2014
%T The computational power of normalizer circuits over black-box groups
%A Juan Bermejo-Vega
%A Cedric Yen-Yu Lin
%A Maarten Van den Nest
%X This work presents a precise connection between Clifford circuits, Shor's factoring algorithm and several other famous quantum algorithms with exponential quantum speed-ups for solving Abelian hidden subgroup problems. We show that all these different forms of quantum computation belong to a common new restricted model of quantum operations that we call \emph{black-box normalizer circuits}. To define these, we extend the previous model of normalizer circuits [arXiv:1201.4867v1,arXiv:1210.3637,arXiv:1409.3208], which are built of quantum Fourier transforms, group automorphism and quadratic phase gates associated to an Abelian group $G$. In previous works, the group $G$ is always given in an explicitly decomposed form. In our model, we remove this assumption and allow $G$ to be a black-box group. While standard normalizer circuits were shown to be efficiently classically simulable [arXiv:1201.4867v1,arXiv:1210.3637,arXiv:1409.3208], we find that normalizer circuits are powerful enough to factorize and solve classically-hard problems in the black-box setting. We further set upper limits to their computational power by showing that decomposing finite Abelian groups is complete for the associated complexity class. In particular, solving this problem renders black-box normalizer circuits efficiently classically simulable by exploiting the generalized stabilizer formalism in [arXiv:1201.4867v1,arXiv:1210.3637,arXiv:1409.3208]. Lastly, we employ our connection to draw a few practical implications for quantum algorithm design: namely, we give a no-go theorem for finding new quantum algorithms with black-box normalizer circuits, a universality result for low-depth normalizer circuits, and identify two other complete problems.
%8 2014/09/16
%G eng
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.4800v1
%0 Journal Article
%D 2014
%T Different Strategies for Optimization Using the Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm
%A Elizabeth Crosson
%A Edward Farhi
%A Cedric Yen-Yu Lin
%A Han-Hsuan Lin
%A Peter Shor
%X We present the results of a numerical study, with 20 qubits, of the performance of the Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm on randomly generated instances of MAX 2-SAT with a unique assignment that maximizes the number of satisfied clauses. The probability of obtaining this assignment at the end of the quantum evolution measures the success of the algorithm. Here we report three strategies which consistently increase the success probability for the hardest instances in our ensemble: decreasing the overall evolution time, initializing the system in excited states, and adding a random local Hamiltonian to the middle of the evolution.
%8 2014/01/28
%G eng
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.7320v1
%0 Journal Article
%D 2014
%T Normalizer circuits and a Gottesman-Knill theorem for infinite-dimensional systems
%A Juan Bermejo-Vega
%A Cedric Yen-Yu Lin
%A Maarten Van den Nest
%X $\textit{Normalizer circuits}$ [1,2] are generalized Clifford circuits that act on arbitrary finite-dimensional systems $\mathcal{H}_{d_1}\otimes ... \otimes \mathcal{H}_{d_n}$ with a standard basis labeled by the elements of a finite Abelian group $G=\mathbb{Z}_{d_1}\times... \times \mathbb{Z}_{d_n}$. Normalizer gates implement operations associated with the group $G$ and can be of three types: quantum Fourier transforms, group automorphism gates and quadratic phase gates. In this work, we extend the normalizer formalism [1,2] to infinite dimensions, by allowing normalizer gates to act on systems of the form $\mathcal{H}_\mathbb{Z}^{\otimes a}$: each factor $\mathcal{H}_\mathbb{Z}$ has a standard basis labeled by $\textit{integers}$ $\mathbb{Z}$, and a Fourier basis labeled by $\textit{angles}$, elements of the circle group $\mathbb{T}$. Normalizer circuits become hybrid quantum circuits acting both on continuous- and discrete-variable systems. We show that infinite-dimensional normalizer circuits can be efficiently simulated classically with a generalized $\textit{stabilizer formalism}$ for Hilbert spaces associated with groups of the form $\mathbb{Z}^a\times \mathbb{T}^b \times \mathbb{Z}_{d_1}\times...\times \mathbb{Z}_{d_n}$. We develop new techniques to track stabilizer-groups based on normal forms for group automorphisms and quadratic functions. We use our normal forms to reduce the problem of simulating normalizer circuits to that of finding general solutions of systems of mixed real-integer linear equations [3] and exploit this fact to devise a robust simulation algorithm: the latter remains efficient even in pathological cases where stabilizer groups become infinite, uncountable and non-compact. The techniques developed in this paper might find applications in the study of fault-tolerant quantum computation with superconducting qubits [4,5].
%8 2014/09/10
%G eng
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.3208v2